Digital Fingerprints Become Harder to Smudge

A new online tool called Wikiscanner has launched to reveal who is updating Wikipedia entries out of self interest. Developed by a computer science student at Cal Tech, the software scans IP addresses used by anonymous editors to identify members of Congress, news organizations and large corporations who have left digital fingerprints all over entries that involve them or, more nefariously, their competitors. Wired News has started a running list of offenders, which includes the Church of Scientology, Viacom and Fox News.

Sometimes I feel like I want to be a hacker. Well, it’s most of the time that I want to be hacker, but I lack a lot of the technical prowess, so instead I play pretend. Anyway, this another tool to use, but I warn, it won’t be long before someone else comes up with a way to fudge the line even more.